WEBVTT

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You're still with me?

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Do one more?

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Yeah, we do.

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OK.

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This is a little longer.

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Do you want 35 pages?

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I'm only kidding.

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But I was asked to read this.

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So it's the opening
poem of my last book.

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It's called "A Panic that
Can Still Come Upon Me",

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panic being one of the few
topics I'm an expert in.

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At any rate, the title comes,
I had written the first canto

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this is in five parts.

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And I had written it.

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And then I went to Des
Moines at the Art Institute

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and I saw this canvas by the
painter, Jess Collins, who

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was the poet Robert
Duncan's life partner,

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and he's an amazing
collage artist.

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And he worked in three ways.

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He did collage and
he did illustrations

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where he would
paint illustrations

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from books, things that usually
aren't subjects for painting.

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And he would build it up
and then carve the paint

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in an impasto fashion.

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But the third way
that's interesting

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here is he did something
called salvage work.

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And I'm interested in salvage
poetry as a form of rescue,

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if you think of the
horrific tradition.

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But salvage is much
more compelling to me

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than "something that's
total like salvation."

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That's something I can't manage.

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But salvage is something,
that's a work that we

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can do that we can rescue
pieces of each other's songs,

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things that are lost, lost
histories, fables, games,

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people.

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At any rate, I found this
work, which is a salvage work.

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And what Jess would do
is he go to a junk shop,

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go to a garage sale and
find a painting by a quote,

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like, "Sunday painter."

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And then he would
take that canvas home

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and then he would improve it.

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He would add these
other elements to it.

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So the text I was
working with here

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that I wanted to improve
during the Bush Administration

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was the New York Times.

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So many of the images here
come out of the Times.

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That's just enough.

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Do you even hear people
explain their poems.

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Exactly.

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This doesn't explain
anything, but sounds good.

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OK.

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This one's a little longer.

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And I'll end with this one.

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All right.

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A panic that can
still come upon me.

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If today and today
I am calling aloud,

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if I break into
pieces of glitter

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on asphalt bits of sun, the din.

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If tires whine on wet
pavement, everything humming.

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If we find we are
still in motion

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and have arrived
in Zeno's thought,

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like if sunshine hits marble
and the sea lights up we might

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know we were loved, are loved.

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If flames and harvests,
the enchanted plain.

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If our wishes are met
with dirt and thyme,

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thistle, oil, heirloom,
and basil or the end result

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is worry, chaos and if
"I should know better."

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If our loves are anointed
with missiles, Apache fire,

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Tomahawks.

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Did we follow the tablets
the pilgrims suggested?

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If we ask that every
song touch its origin

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just once and the
years engulfed.

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If problems of identity confound
sages, derelict philosophers,

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administrators, who
can say I am found,

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if this time you, all
of it, this time now.

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If nothing save Saturdays
at the metro and if rain

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falls sidelong in the platz
doorways, onto mansard routes.

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If enumerations of the
fall and if falling,

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cities rocked with
gas fires at dawn.

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Can you rescind the
ghost's double nakedness

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hungry and waning if
children, soldiers, children,

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taken down in schools,
if burning fuel?

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Who can't say they
have seen this

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and can we sing this if in the
aurora's reflecting the sea,

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gauze touching the breast.

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Too bad for you,
beautiful singer,

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unadorned by laurel child of
thunder and scapegoat alike.

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If the crowd in
the mind becoming

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crowded in streets and
villages, and trains

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run next to the freeway.

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If exit is merely a sign.

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Two.

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It isn't all right to want
just anything all the time,

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be specific sky.

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I can read the narrow
line above the hills.

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The day unbraids its pretty
light and I am here to see it.

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This must be all there is
right now in the world.

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There are things larger
than understanding,

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things we know cannot
be held in the mind.

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If the sun throbs like a
drum every five minutes,

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what can we do with
this, the 100,000 years

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it takes a photon to reach
the surface of the sun, eight

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minutes to hit our eyes?

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If every afternoon
gravity and fire

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it's like that here,
undressed, unwound.

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Three.

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If today and today I
am speaking to you,

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or if you/I whisper,
touch, explain.

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If they/you hate
those phrases, if we

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struggle to get to the thing,
the body and the other noises.

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If a W stumbles here
even in private,

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there was this man we said
everywhere between us,

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if speech can free us.

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If summer fall winter
spring, the broadcast day

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spins round my head it's
grin stuck out there

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when I am a tiger
inside the DMZ or if I

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am a tiger man if no
one believes what I see.

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If behind the grail and new
elm the pink light saying,

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welcome earthling, my biography
as an atom picture of my smile,

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is this what my body said?

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If I forget my notebook,
if these gaps I feel

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are also the gaps I am built
inside, thinking it's all good.

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If the sun sharp and hot and
still but deep and clarifying,

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walking its boulevards, if
bound by the most ignoble cords,

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if squatting in time.

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If every day a struggle,
the blue copse speaking sky

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arching over nothing, uh-huh.

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If every struggle
ice-cream truck

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tinkle interrupting
the cosmological,

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if every day strife, every day
sprechen Sie, if every day uh,

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is this what my body
says my buddy said?

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And if we die and begin to lose
consciousness and the flag.

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There was this man we said
this W here even in private.

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I said in my letter,
if I see you again.

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Four.

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A branch and the scent
of pine in summer,

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the bridge and the water in the
creek, the stones and the sound

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of water, the creek
and my body when

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hair and water flowed over me.

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If I am a bridge I am
standing on, thinking,

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saying goodbye to myself.

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When I stood by the water
in life thinking of my life,

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pine boughs the
hill next to water.

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The sun in the creek on
the bridge on my hair

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and pine boughs and
wind mixed with water,

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one crow skating by,
the life of water,

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life of thinking
and moving, a crow

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passes by this place in
the mind, on my eyes.

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Five.

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So the vocalise day
imprinted a sound.

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I'm not stupid.

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I too unwind in the
most circuitous fashion.

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I undress water directly.

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Who hasn't seen
unnumbered sparrows

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enter the silhouette of a tree?

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Why shouldn't I come
in from the cold?

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Sure, there is the monument,
the grass and the plate

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inside it grows on.

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If the answer becomes sun then
sun inside, normal things, OK.

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The ribbon above our
heads is not a banner.

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Scaling this leafy
architecture, we

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say wind, night
sky, moon, clouds,

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stars if silver stands
for syncopation indeed,

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symphonic dailiness
is felt order.

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I have felt it at
the back of me,

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light on the table,
the book open.

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If we struggle for a
name, if colors change,

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if mood is connected
to naming, to color.

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If say a ship's in deep
water and a piece of sky

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empties the mind or when
I was frigate-tossed.

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If I wanted to go all over a
word and live inside its name,

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so be it.

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There is my body and
the idea of my body.

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The surf breaking and
the picture of a wave.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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